A Different Dream
by dzio
Summary: In which Wilson learns why you should be careful what you wish for and what the consequences of conversations with strangers may be. A sequel to "Stray". R
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **This story is a companion to "Stray" and you really should read it first, or it won't make much sense. I know I said I wouldn't write the sequel and that I certainly wouldn't explain how exactly Wilson got turned into a cat. Mostly because I had no idea myself. Well, like the Doctor says, never say never ever. It's going to be more serious than "Stray", but there should be some funny moments later on.

This story is a crossover with Neil Gaiman's "Sandman", which you certainly _should_ read, because it's brilliant, but you don't have to be familiar with that verse to follow it. In addition to the standard disclaimer (see my profile) – everyone and everything you recognize from the comic, including the quote for this story, belongs to Neil Gaiman and/or the artists who worked with him on "Sandman".

Anyway, here goes. With special dedication to everyone who demanded a sequel, especially **Eryaforsthye**, who promised me e-cookies of love,and **Ritulia**, who translated "Stray" into Russian (that still blows me away).

**ooooooooooooo**

"_Dream casts a human shadow, when it occurs to him to do so."_

**ooooooooooooo**

Wilson noticed the man right after he had ordered his drink. It would be hard not to. He was not the kind of a person one usually meets in posh hotel bars. Thin, dressed in long, flowing coat, wild black hair falling over his face, skin impossibly pale – he certainly stood out.

_Probably some kind of a rock star, _decided Wilson. He glanced couple more times at the stranger and tried to figure out if he was anyone he'd heard about.

The man looked over his shoulder, scanning the dimly lit room, searching for someone. There was something not quite right about the way the shadows played on his face, the way the darkness hid his eyes more deeply than it should. His gaze swept over Wilson and lingered there for a second. Wilson looked down immediately, turning his glass in his hands and feeling ridiculously embarrassed, like a little kid caught doing something he shouldn't.

"...there! See, there he is! My brother, that's him, over there, and I think I'm late, but I don't know, there was something..."

There was a girl standing in the entrance. The hotel security guard was holding her arm and she was pointing at the pale stranger at the bar. Wilson stared. So did most of the patrons and the bartender. It would be hard not to. Her hair was hanging in limp, multi-colored strands over one side of her head, and cropped short on the other. She was wearing torn fishnet stockings, an equally torn black t-shirt, almost long enough to cover her knees, and a leather jacket, several sizes too big for her small frame.

"I was supposed to remember. I'm better at remembering now. But then I saw this girl and I gave her a smile and she gave me one, so we both have a smile now, but it's not the same smile, you know. Isn't that nice? Did you know that the street outside smelled like color blue?" the girl finished her bizarre tirade and looked up at the confused guard with a wide smile.

The man at the bar walked towards her and she took a small step back.

"I'm sorry I forgeted, don't be mad, Dream!" she exclaimed in a high, trembling voice.

The stranger spoke briefly with the guard and the girl, but Wilson couldn't catch even a single word of their conversation. He felt slightly guilty about eavesdropping like that, but there was something about the two that didn't allow him to turn around and mind his own business. Something familiar, something he should remember...

"I could teach you how to smell colors," said the girl to the guard. "But I don't think you'd like that, not for long."

The man, her brother, who was halfway back to the bar, spoke over his shoulder. "Go to our room, Del."

The girl waved at him and half-walked, half-staggered out.

The chair the stranger had occupied earlier had been taken by a middle-aged blonde woman, who Wilson recognized as one of the guests at the convention. The strange man looked around and finally walked up to Wilson.

"Is this seat taken?" he asked, pointing to a chair next to him.

"No, go ahead," said Wilson.

The stranger nodded and sat down, without looking up once. They sat in silence for a few minutes and Wilson felt more and more uncomfortable with every passing second.

Finally he stunned himself by blurting out, "Is your sister all right?" and immediately regretted it. "I'm sorry, I don't know what's gotten into me," he apologized. "It's none of my business."

The man looked at him for the first time. For a second Wilson thought he saw just blackness where his eyes should be, two pools of darkness, with a distant spark of electric blue in the center But then he blinked and the illusion was gone. Of course it was gone, that would be completely absurd...

"She's as fine as she can be, these days," answered the man after a long pause.

"I'm sorry," said Wilson. "I know how hard that can be."

"Do you," said the man, his voice barely above the whisper.

"My brother... He's been sick since he was a teenager and I couldn't help him. I tried, but... I still hope he's out there somewhere. That maybe I can find him again."

_Why did I say that? _thought Wilson, puzzled. He never spoke about his brother, not even with House, not even with his wives. Why would he tell a complete stranger?

"What would you do if you found him?" asked the stranger, looking intently at Wilson.

"I'd get him help. The best facility, the best doctors there are. I'm a doctor myself, I know people who'd be able to help him get better." He took a sip of his drink. "Or... If he can't get better, at least he'd be somewhere safe, warm. He wouldn't be cold and hungry and alone, out on the streets."

He glanced at the other man, hesitated for a moment. "I could... give you some names, some phone numbers?" he said in the end.

"Names?"

"Of doctors... Del? That's your sister's name, isn't it? Maybe someone could help..."

"No," said the stranger.

"But..."

"No," the man repeated. "But I thank you for your kind offer."

Wilson searched for something else to say, but nothing came to him. He spent next five minutes in growing discomfort, thinking miserable thoughts about his lost brother and his best friend, well on his way to becoming just as lost. He downed his drink and looked up, not sure if he wanted another one, or if the feeling of helplessness smothering him should rather be ignored than drowned.

"What's your brother's name?" asked the stranger, startling Wilson.

"Danny," he said. "Daniel Wilson."

"I could ask my sister about him."

Wilson laughed. "What makes you think she'd know him? I don't even know which state..."

"She knows him," said the man, his voice calm and certain. "She knows all of them."

That was a strange answer. Maybe Del wasn't the only one in the family with problems...

"I seriously doubt that," said Wilson. "And even if she did, the interrogation is the last thing she needs."

The man nodded. "As you wish," he said.

In the far corner of the room the piano players started the evening's performance. The slow, flowing jazz improvisation washed over Wilson, making him think about House.

"I'll have another," he gestured to the bartender, who replaced his empty glass with a full one.

Wilson took a sip and slumped in his chair, his mood darkening even further.

"I'd probably not be able to help him even if I could find him," he sighed. "My best friend is about to self-destruct and I can't find a way to help him either. And he's right here, I see him every day at work, I talk to him every day, and I still don't know what to do."

In the back of his mind he was wondering what made him talk about his past failures and his fear of history repeating itself, but for some reason the thought seemed like a distant echo, not important at all.

"I don't understand why he's doing it, why he can't accept that there are people who want to help him. He can't even admit that he needs it."

He looked at the stranger. "Your sister... you have a connection, I could see that when you spoke with her. I... I used to have that too, me and Danny, we were really close when we were growing up. And now... I lost him. If I met him tonight, we'd be strangers. And House is... I don't know. I don't understand him any more. I don't know how to reach him."

Wilson shook his head, suddenly feeling as if he was waking up, his distant discomfort and awkwardness of the situation jumping straight to the front of his mind. He put down his glass, splashing some whiskey on the bar and on his hand.

"I'm sorry. I think I should turn in now," he said, feeling the overwhelming urge to escape.

The stranger offered him a thin smile. "Yes," he said, "a good night's sleep will probably make you feel better."

Wilson paid for his drinks and hurried to the elevator, suddenly very, very sleepy.

The strange man sitting alone at the bar looked at his retreating figure, highlighted against the bright rectangle of the door. For a fraction of a second a blue spark lit in his impossibly dark eyes.

"Sweet dreams," he said and smiled.

**ooooooooooooo**

tbc.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **There it is, chapter number two. This one is mostly happening in poor Wilson's head, but bare with me, I just need to get him to where he's going and then the fun will begin.

**ooooooooooooo**

Wilson woke up and immediately regretted it. His head was pounding, there was a truly horrible taste in his mouth and his entire body felt as if someone jumped up and down on it. Repeatedly.

Did he really get _that _drunk last night? He remembered a few drinks at the hotel bar, but nothing that would explain feeling like a stomped-on cockroach in the morning.

He felt brave enough to open one eye a tiny fraction and to his surprise all he saw was darkness. That was even stranger. He went to bed late and slightly tipsy, he shouldn't have woken up before the wake-up call he'd ordered for eight thirty in the morning. The curtains were open and the sun was up long before that even in November.

His surprise seemed to wake him up more fully and he begun to register other things, which he missed it those first, confused minutes.

First of all, he was laying on something hard and rather cold. Second of all, he could hear cars outside, but the sound was coming from _above_, as if he were in some kind of a basement. And finally, there was a smell, pervasive and unpleasant, but hard to identify. He took a deep breath. Hmm. Wet concrete. Rust. Old newspapers. Rats.

Wilson's mind skidded to a halt. Since when did concrete have a smell? Since when did he know what _rats _smelled like?!

"What the hell is going on here!" he yelled, jumping to his feet.

The fact that there were four of them, combined with an angry feline yowl that came from his mouth instead of words, made him fall promptly on his face.

Wilson was never one to deny reality, when it was staring him right in a face. Oh, he'd been tempted, many times. Usually after someone mentioned Gregory House and his latest mind-boggling insanity, to which the first reaction of any sane mind was invariably "You've got to be kidding me." After which came the chilling realization that once again no kidding was involved and the facts, hard as it may be, had to be faced. James Wilson had a lot of practice with accepting the seemingly impossible reality.

What he didn't have practice with was finding himself in a situation that required said accepting as a result of something he had done himself. That was new. For one moment he wondered whether he should be proud of himself, or worried out of his apparently slipping mind. Then he got a grip on himself.

Right. Face the facts. Accept the reality.

"I'm a cat," said Wilson. It might have made him feel better, if only it hadn't sounded so much like "Meow"...

Well, there was nothing for it. He fervently hoped that someone or something would change him back into his proper form any minute now, but since the dark basement room remained stubbornly empty, Wilson decided to do something.

"First things first," he muttered to himself and jumped a little when a soft, rumbling purr emanated from his throat. It sent a tingling sensation through his entire body, which would probably be quite pleasant, if only it didn't startle him like that. Wilson shook himself, decided that investigating purring was not a priority and did what he intended to do in the first place – attempted to stand up.

_Attempted_ being the operative word. After several unsuccessful tries he felt slightly bruised and so frustrated that his tail was brushing the concrete floor with rhythmical, angry twitches. It turned out that four legs, some of them with knees bending the wrong way, were much harder to coordinate than just two.

"I can't sit here like this forever!" he yelled. He sounded almost exactly like Lincoln, his aunt's cat, did, just before he scratched Wilson's brother so badly that he still had tiny scars on his arm twenty years later.

He tried again, not very hopeful he'd succeed. His mind wandered back to that day with his family, when Danny was still a kid, healthy and happy. It took him few seconds to notice that he was actually walking towards door, barely visible in the dark. It surprised him so much that he stumbled and was about to fall again, but then his tail moved _there _and _there_ and he regained his balance.

It seemed that the cat in him knew what it was doing, as long as he wasn't complicating things by over-thinking something as simple as walking. A tiny voice in his head, sounding very much like House, laughed at him mockingly. Wilson wisely decided to ignore it.

Since he was able to move around (as long as he didn't try too hard), he decided it was high time he got out of this dump and into the (relatively) fresh air. He sniffed and decided that the corridor on the left smelled more like the outside. That was almost as strange as having a tail, but he followed his nose. In order to keep it from getting in a way of walking, he focused his brain on remembering last night and searching for anything that might somehow explain this insanity.

He remembered disjointed fragments of a really bizarre dream, involving the pale stranger from the hotel bar, an Egyptian goddess with cat's head and, for some reason, a janitor who had a carved pumpkin where his head should be. It seemed important somehow, which didn't make any sense.

_Nothing does this morning, so I might just as well try to remember_, thought Wilson and focused on his confused and fading memories.

The stranger. He was in the middle of all this mess, that one thing was clear. In Wilson's dream he seemed more real that he was in that hotel bar. Who could be more real in a dream than in the waking world? What did the man say? Why couldn't he remember?

If he could swear, he would – colorfully enough to make even House proud. This was supposed to stop him from panicking, not make him even more anxious.

Suddenly he heard a rustling sound and his head whipped to the right, all his muscles tensing. Something moved in the dark, getting closer, and finally he saw it. And froze. Any other day a rat would not scare him at all, but then, any other day it wouldn't be half his size.

Wilson realized that while he was a cat, and as such a natural predator and hunter, he was a rather _small _cal.

Swallowing his panic he jumped back and sprinted in a direction of the exit (or at least so he hoped) as fast as he could, which, fortunately, was quite fast indeed.

Twenty seconds later he was crouching at the top of the stairs to the basement, with his heart pounding so fast that if he were still human, it would probably explode. He peered cautiously into a brightly lit hallway. It seemed to be a rather run-down residential building, with dirty floor tiles and once-white walls. In the distance he could see a young woman, impossibly tall. She took some letters from her mailbox, locked it and started walking towards the stairs. Towards Wilson.

He jumped back, almost falling down the top step. He didn't suspect the woman would want to hurt him in any way, but the cat's instinct worked before any conscious decision could be made. _I'll have to watch out for that_, thought Wilson, imagining other cat-things he might find himself doing without meaning to, most of them involving other cats in one way or another.

The woman walked up the stairs, her steps thundering impossibly loud above Wilson's head. He glanced behind him, suddenly remembering the monster rat he had run away from before, but fortunately he was alone.

He heard another set of footsteps a minute later, this time coming down. He tensed, preparing himself for a dash towards the door. A teenage boy came into view. Wilson silently followed him, trying to plaster himself to the wall and become as small as possible. Then the door was open and he sprang forward, past the boy, who let out a startled yelp, down the flight of stone steps, wet with freezing rain, across the sidewalk and finally into the relative, and extremely smelly, safety under a parked car. Wilson took a deep breath of relief and almost gagged when the choking odor of metal, motor oil, exhaust and old trash hit him.

Doing his very best to ignore the stench, he crawled cautiously to the other side of the car. He looked out from under it and gasped. He was staring at the very familiar door of House's apartment building.

**ooooooooooooo**

tbc.


End file.
